The delegates - stewards, Clerks of the Course, scrutineers and event organisers - representing 48 ASNs, spent two productive days at the Autoklub of the Czech Republic’s majestic and historic headquarters in Prague where they joined a number of interactive seminars, meetings and workshops.

Following a welcome video speech from FIA President Jean Todt, Yves Matton, the FIA Rally Director, officially opened the session, assisted by Jérôme Roussel, Category Manager – Regional Rally, and Jutta Kleinschmidt, President of the FIA Cross-Country Rally Commission.

Jan Stovicek, President of the Autoklub of the Czech Republic, and Tomas Kunc, Secretary General, also delivered a short welcome message to the participants as the hosts of the event.

Matton started by recalling the FIA’s rally vision and summarising the main achievements from 2019. He then set out the aims for 2020, which included highlighting the rally pyramid and the introduction of the Rally3 category, which is set to begin in 2021. Jérôme Roussel followed up with an update on the Regional Rally Championships and a focus on the daring FIA’s Rally Star talent detection programme, due to be officially launched during the FIA Sport Conference in Thailand in June.

Scrutineers spent Friday morning attending a seminar hosted by the FIA Technical team before heading to the workshops of Racing 21, an FIA European Rally Championship entrant, for a practical session.

The FIA Safety task force delivered a seminar on Rally Safety best practice, covering topics such as the WRC Safety Action list, the potential adoption of slow zones and the ASN safety delegate training programme. Jutta Kleinschmidt hosted a session on Cross Country regulations, which included an explanation of the new T4 and T5 categories and the appointment of safety and medical delegates.

Saturday’s agenda began with Uwe Schmidt, Rally Commission Vice-President, summarising changes to the International Sporting Code and Regional Rally Regulations for 2020. At the same time, innovations to the Cross Country roadbook format were discussed. Schmidt later hosted a presentation of the protests and appeals procedures.

The afternoon part of the seminar comprised sessions relating to the more practical aspects of the work of the officials. The Rally Observer guidelines, developed to capture the challenges, objectives and latest best practice related to the role, were presented with the aim to help ensure the highest standards of fair competition and safety. The delegates could also get an overview of Rally Control best practice, featuring ways to improve the Rally Control room’s set up and communications, and details of rally tracking systems in use on WRC and regional rally events.

The environment was covered as a key topic to focus on, with event organisers all around the world encouraged to measure and improve their environmental impact. The WRC is the first FIA World Championship to have made top-level environmental accreditation compulsory for all rally events since 2016 and observers attending regional rallies will be tasked with completing a five-stage environmental section within their event report.

The day ended with a number of steward case study sessions, before the closing speeches led by Yves Matton.

Summarising the seminar, the FIA Rally Director said:

“It has been a great pleasure to see so many event officials joining this seminar – the first one that brings together the rally and cross-country disciplines – and such a high level of professionalism and commitment during the sessions.

For this 11th edition, we were gathered here in Prague in a very special place, full of history and passion for cars and bikes, which shows the strong motor sport culture in Eastern Europe. I’d like to say a warm thank you to our Czech hosts.

We can never stop our efforts to maintain the highest standards and keep improving in the areas of regulations, safety and environment. In this regard, this meeting was, once again, an essential platform for sharing the latest updates and best practices.

This year, we tried to offer a more diversified content and invited the event organisers and Clerks of the Course to join, alongside Stewards and Observers. It has been an intense and enriching experience and I would like to thank all attendees, experts and speakers for their valuable contribution.

I hope all of them take away useful tools and many new learnings that will help them with the successful planning and running of their event around the world.”

Click here to see the photo album of the 2020 Rally & Cross Country Officials Seminar. More to come.